About
Jessica decided to go to law school after experiencing the challenges of the Canadian immigration process first-hand. Despite Jessica and her non-Canadian partner having lived together for 10 years in Canada, his immigration application was denied based on a legal technicality. This influenced Jessica’s desire to learn more about navigating systems that have the potential to, sometimes arbitrarily, affect peoples’ lives in profound ways. Jessica’s father worked on questions of Indigenous-settler relations and spent time working with theDene Nationin the Northwest Territories. From a young age, Jessica was exposed to Indigenous laws and the impacts of colonization. Therefore, another motivating factor in entering law school for Jessica was to examine the legitimacy of Canadian sovereignty and explore Indigenous legal orders. However, there was very little acknowledgment of Indigenous laws within law schools or the legal profession at that time. After graduating from the University of Victoria’s Faculty of Law, clerking for a year at theBC Supreme Court, articling with a union, and working as a policy analyst for theOffice of the Privacy Commissioner, Jessica came across the Indigenous Law Research Unit (ILRU) at her alma mater. She had an opportunity to discuss the project, which was established in partnership with theTruth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, with its founders: Val Napoleon and Hadley Friedland. She viewed the project as an opportunity to work through broad questions regarding the reconciliation of law and peoples in Canada and jumped at the chance to contribute. Jessica had faced some roadblocks working for organizations that only operated within the parameters of state law, and she viewed ILRU as an opportunity to expand the boundaries of her legal work. Jessica’s past experience as a community organizer and educator made the collaborative and community-centered approach especially interesting to her.